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From the Edge

March 1797. Ninety Mile Beach, Victoria. Five British sailors and twelve Bengali seamen swim ashore after their longboat is ripped apart in a storm. The British penal colony at Port Jackson is 700 kilometres to the north, their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove stranded far to the south on a tiny island in Bass Strait. To rescue them and save their own lives, they have no alternative. They set out to walk to Sydney. What follows is one of Australia's greatest survival stories and cross-cultural encounters

In From the Edge, award-winning historian Mark McKenna uncovers the places and histories that Australians so often fail to see. Like the largely forgotten story of the sailors' walk in 1797, these remarkable histories—the founding of a 'new Singapore' in West Arnhem Land in the 1840s, the site of Australia's largest industrial development project in the Pilbara and its extraordinary…

March 1797. Ninety Mile Beach, Victoria. Five British sailors and twelve Bengali seamen swim ashore after their longboat is ripped apart in a storm. The British penal colony at Port Jackson is 700 kilometres to the north, their fellow-survivors from the wreck of the Sydney Cove stranded far to the south on a tiny island in Bass Strait. To rescue them and save their own lives, they have no alternative. They set out to walk to Sydney. What follows is one of Australia's greatest survival stories and cross-cultural encounters.

In From the Edge, award-winning historian Mark McKenna uncovers the places and histories that Australians so often fail to see. Like the largely forgotten story of the sailors' walk in 1797, these remarkable histories—the founding of a 'new Singapore' in West Arnhem Land in the 1840s, the site of Australia's largest industrial development project in the Pilbara and its extraordinary Indigenous rock art, and James Cook's meeting with Aboriginal people at Cooktown in 1770—lie on the edge of the continent and the edge of national consciousness. Retracing their steps, McKenna explores the central drama of Australian history: the encounter between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians—each altered irrevocably by the other—and offers a new understanding of the country and its people.

“

A rediscovery of history which offers possibilities of national understanding and rebirth.”

Noel Pearson

Mark McKenna

Mark McKenna is one of Australia's leading historians. A research fellow in History at the University of Sydney, he is the author of several prize-winning books, including Looking for Blackfellas' Point: an Australian History of Place, which won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction and Book of the Year in the 2003 NSW Premier's Literary Awards.

Seven years in the making, his biography of Manning Clark won the Non-Fiction Prime Minister's Literary Award and…

Praise

"From the Edge is striking in its ability to fold together the present and the past and illuminate the way in which so much of Australia's Indigenous and local history has remained neglected"

Bookseller + Publisher

"McKenna's prose is crisp and powerful, his pace brisk. The first two chapters are especially gripping – you'll want to option the film right – but his greatest achievement is more profound. McKenna manages to shake white Australia's understanding of the landscape as a place to be valued for its wild, "natural" emptiness. Contemporary Australians often seek out remote places precisely to revel in the sense of being profoundly alone, but From The Edge is a potent reminder of why this emptiness should chill us. McKenna gives glimpses of a country brimming with life and activity, permeated by cultural meaning and profound knowledge."

The Saturday Paper

"This is a book that will haunt your memory and ignite your dreams of what Australia once was and might yet become."

Ian McCalman

"A rediscovery of history which offers possibilities of national understanding and rebirth."